The end is Nighy

THE end is nigh. The world is ending in 12 minutes. What would you do in those last precious few minutes? There's an excuse for asking actor Bill Nighy the end-of-the-world question because The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy finds Earth facing destruction to make way for an intergalactic bypass.

Nighy has a clear idea of what he'd do. "I'd put the kettle on for a cup of Yorkshire Tea - they owe me money - and I'd put on a Stones record. Don't ask me which one although if you forced me, Sticky Fingers," he says.

"Then I'd phone my dogs to say goodbye, formally. I'd reach for the poems, the Complete Works of Harold Pinter, and I'd read myself a couple of Harold poems which I'm sure would cheer me up.

"I'd check my hair, you don't want to go with your hair in a mess, you know what I'm saying?. And then I'd kick back and relax."

I'm not sure he'd have time to do all that in just 12 minutes but Nighy is such a delightful, amusing talker you can forgive him.

In recent years, roles in TV (including the thriller State Of Play) and movies (notably Love Actually and Still Crazy) have made him something of a national treasure. Best of all, he doesn't take himself - or interviews - too seriously. In The Hitchhiker's Guide film, he plays Slartibartfast, which is not a name you should attempt to say after a few drinks. He builds planets, a craftsman who's won awards for designing beautiful coastlines with intricate fjords.

Nighy has a few ideas on how he'd remodel the world. He'd get rid of the English Channel. "And I'm toying with the idea of making it a little cooler in the Middle East. It might not work but hey, nothing else seems to have. And maybe some more rain in California," he says.

The Channel removal is designed to bring us closer to other countries. "It's not good for our manners to be stuck out there," he says.

"We should be dragged back to the mainland and made to muck in with the rest of them. And learn some new languages, which we disgracefully never do."

For him, one of the most pleasing things about Douglas Adams' book was the central joke that "you have these extraordinary people in extraordinary places doing extraordinary things but when they communicate with one another it's very familiar, regular and normal," he says.

"It also has an essential Englishness that I really recognise. I suppose there's a parallel in my life in that it makes me laugh. That kind of delivery, the irony and wryness of it is perhaps something that I aspire to.

"And the bureaucracy, that's for sure. He manages to make it allegorical without making you want to kill yourself or burn the book. He manages to pull off that trick, either without you knowing or you're subliminally receiving that information. It's entertaining and also true."

Those bureaucratic parallels are something that struck American actor Sam Rockwell, who plays two-head Zaphod Beeblebrox. He's President of the Galaxy with a chat-up line that goes, "I'm from a different planet, would you like to see my spaceship?'.

He looked at political figures Bill Clinton and George W Bush to prepare for the part. It's funny because Douglas Adams deals with religion, God, the meaning of life and stuff - and I just did a part where I played Judas Iscariot. "I've been a little more political and religious. I learned about the New Testament and, this last Presidential election, I was much more politically aware and concerned with what was going on."

The offbeat humour of The Hitchhiker's Guide wasn't a problem as he was raised on Monty Python and has always loved the British sense of humour.

He read the book after getting the part. "I was more of a Doctor Who fan as a kid, but I'd heard about The Hitchhiker's Guide and thought it was a special thing to be part of," he says.

Rockwell says his rock god-like Zaphod is a combination of Elvis, Clinton and Freddie Mercury with a bit of George W Bush thrown in for good measure.

Playing Zaphod presented practical difficulties because he has two heads, although different to the TV version as one head is hidden until it feels the need to pose its nose in..

Two heads are clearly not better than one in his case. "We did some CGI second head stuff and the prosthetics were pretty wild," he says. "The CGI effect was dots on my neck and I had to walk around with my neck thrown right back. It was tough for the other actors to have to react to that. That was an interesting dilemma for an actor, having two heads."

Published: 28/04/2005